San Francisco school reintroduces auto shop class

[RandySF]

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- We're going to take you down memory lane when high schools offered auto shop as part of the curriculum. One high school in San Francisco is revving up its program and encouraging other students to sign up.

Few schools in the Bay Area encourage high school students to get down and dirty to repair cars. George Washington High in San Francisco is reintroducing car shop as part of its curriculum.

"I just like the feeling of messing with cars and you can tweak cars and all of that," said student Derek Kwan.

"I feel girls should know. If your car breaks down on the side of the road, you should know how to get out and fix that, you know," said student Adina Vasquez.


http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/education&id=9243648

[ffr]

1. Difference to when I took it in HS, is today they're hybrids

I'd have to take the class all over again. Not a bad idea when you think about it.

[jtuck004]

7. My mechanic friend takes a new one about 3-4 times a year on average, just to keep up.

Hopefully they teach them this is just the beginning...

[gejohnston]

2. Right on,

I think the years of denigrating the trades is elitest and disgusting

[ChazII]

3. This is a class

I would have been happy to have taken if only it had been open to girls in the early 70's. Now I would not mind taking a course at a community college.

It always bothered me that the vocational ed class were looked down on by many of those who were headed to a university.

[kwijybo]

14. Then take it!

The classes should be available at your local CC, and cheaper than you think.

Age is not a problem: I learned to fix brakes and weld a few years before I turned 50.

[ChazII]

24. Thanks, I will check the spring schedule. n/t

[Sirveri]

33. Good luck finding one. In my area most of the CC's shutdown the Vocational classes.

I have to drive an hour past several other colleges to go into the machine tool program.

[ChazII]

34. East Valley Institute of Technology

serves several school districts in the Tempe area. They also have night classes so that is where I will start.

[littlewolf]

16. our HS had a "powderpuff" course.

one class all girls each semester,
covered all the basics. it was very popular.
I think this is a good idea.

[Pakhet]

30. In the mid 70s they let me take wood

Shop and drafting since I failed home-ex twice.

[KT2000]

4. Good! and add hom-ec too

Nutrition and cooking skills are needed by everyone - sewing too. Make them all for boys and girls.

My nephew owns a transmission business (for large equipment) and he cannot find qualified people for installation and repair. He finally got an older man to fill one spot.

[MynameisBlarney]

11. Agreed

I'm a dude and I took home-ec, granted it was because of a girl I had a crush on, but I actually use a lot of the skills I learned.
And as a parts manager for a marine diesel repair shop, I can vouch for the difficulty of finding qualified mechanics.
Things break, and there will always be a need for people that can fix broken things.

[liberal_at_heart]

12. They should teach personal finance too.

[LittleGirl]

15. ding ding ding and here's a winner

Personal finance! YES.

[littlewolf]

17. Home Ec was a required class for guys.

taught us basic skills like cooking, sewing etc.
it was very good idea and one that should be duplicated.

[femmocrat]

28. It's no longer called "home ec"---

It has been replaced by Family and Consumer Science and they teach far more than cooking and sewing.

[Pakhet]

31. When my great grandmother took it

In the very late 1800s they called it domestic management and included budgeting and finance

[obama2terms]

5. That's wonderful!

The high school I went to had it until 2005, I don't understand why they or any school gets rid of it. It's so useful!

[quakerboy]

6. I find myself wondering how that will work?

I know some schools in my area still do auto shop classes, but last I heard they were focusing on rebuilding older cars or doing purely cosmetic work, because they needed too many specialized, expensive tools to work on anything newer.

[Posteritatis]

13. I'm not really seeing a problem with that, since the point isn't mode-specific job training

If people want that then they pursue it as post-secondary studies in one place or another. A high school shop class, whether it's working on older cars, other types of equipment, or anything else, would be more about getting people into mechanical work in general, putting some of it to practice and directly seeing the efefcts, learning the starting principles of how this stuff works, figuring out if it's something they'd like to go deeper into after they graduate, etc.

[jtuck004]

8. K&R n/t

[chuckstevens]

9. A Component of the Plan to Ruin the American Education System

High Schools used to teach tech programs for kids who were not going to college. Students could learn real skills that could help them obtain high paying jobs in trades like plumbing, carpentry. auto tech.

However, in an attempt to ruin public education in this country, "forces" decided that every kid could get a 28 on their ACT Test and go to an Ivy league College. NCLB says that by 2014 EVERY kid in American must be at grade level or the school is "failing". They knew these unrealistic goals could never happen, but they also knew they could blame it on the teachers and their unions and start preaching the need to form "for profit" charter schools. Not only is the idea that every kid must be at grade average and that every kid can go to college like the "Emperor's New Clothes, it ruined the route into the middle class for many non-college bound kids by gutting tech classes.

GOOD FOR SAN FRANCISCO FOR BRING BACK AUTO TECH!

[liberal_at_heart]

10. I agree with every thing you have said in your post.

Manufacturing is what made middle class America. They got rid of the classes that taught manufacturing skills and they moved the jobs to other countries. My child is behind his grade level, and I refuse to buy into the lie that he is somehow a failure because he does not measure up to some stupid standard that George W. Bush, Obama, and Bill Gates have set for every child in America.

[SoCalDem]

25. And classes like these were the carrot...to keep some kids IN school

There were always kids who planned to get married right out of school & start having babies...or who planned to get a local job & who saw the academic stuff as boring and useless..

Our high school even offered upholstery in their vo tech curriculum.. and wood shop...metal shop.. auto shop (painting cars too)....cooking, sewing..

Teachers always had cars waiting for their turn

[Nevernose]

27. That, and tech programs are VERY expensive

Insurance costs alone make wood shop a pipe dream for most schools. God forbid we stop bombing brown people for a couple of weeks and use those billions to provide decent educations.

[yuiyoshida]

18. I had a friend who became a car mechanic ..

They were never out of work, they always had work to do.. and he was constantly making money with it. His problem now is he has
emphysema from car exhaust and smoking. He is on disability now and no longer working.

However, back to the point, auto mechanics seem to make decent wages even during a recession. With all the cars on the road, not everyone knows how to repair their own vehicles, so there is always going to be a demand for car repair.

[liberal N proud]

19. Fantastic

Hope that trend moves to more schools across the country.

These classes give those who might not go to college an opportunity or spur someone into a career in industry.

[kimbutgar]

20. My boyfriend in high school took welding at Lincoln high in San Francisco

This was in the 70's. He apprenticed with the union and made $18 an hour. He was never gonna go to college but he was lucky to get a good full time job as a welder making good money. In those days they had plumbing, electrical, carpentry and auto shoppe. They got rid of these programs because prop 13 took away a lot of revenue from schools. Now they have a shortage of these trades. Now the only trade schools are for profit and cost prohibitive. I met the teacher at a school seminar and he also took auto repair at a SF high school. The unions are now working with the school district to start up more programs.

[liberal_at_heart]

22. Defunding of our education system is a huge problem.

[kestrel91316]

21. When I went to junior high in UT back in the early 70s, they had home ec for the girls. Period.

Sewing, bedmaking, cooking, shopping tips, child care.

And then they had wood shop for the boys. Period.

Absolutely no crossover was permitted. This WAS UT, and it was the 70s, after all.

In high school in OH there was auto shop for the boys, and nothing for the girls, I don't think. If there was home ec, I wasn't interested enough to even know about it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. Kids need to learn how to work with their hands, no matter what their destiny.

Kids are not getting that at home, by and large, these days.

By working and creating with physical objects, they get back in touch with reality. Too much of their lives these days are mediated by digital devices.

[pnwmom]

26. Real engineers work on their cars.

And everybody benefits from knowing about how they work.

[BrotherIvan]

29. In our school system they had amazing after school programs

One teacher had a computer animation class that Pixar recruited from. Any kid in the district could take it. Another school had software and graphic design. Another had welding and I believe cabinetry. The art school had classes after school for students from other high schools. It was a great system and I wish more areas would pool their resources and work together in such a way as it allows each school to specialize in a particular program and get the right equipment. And this was not a wealthy school district by any means.

We NEED more trade training in our schools. We now expect someone who doesn't wish or can't afford college to go to one of these for-profit vulture schools and spend tens of thousands of dollars to be trained in a trade for a certificate. It's one of the ways employers can use the H1B Visa loophole. We also need to teach children how to be good citizens and live their lives, such as cooking, finance, raising children, voting, and at least TWO languages, all those things overworked parents do not have the time or the expertise to pass on to their children as many of my students had immigrant parents who did not go beyond primary school. That's how you do it.

[Prophet 451]

32. Great idea

Not everyone has the temperament or inclination for academic colleges. Skilled manual work is great for the people more interested in practicalities than academics. And that's not meant to be patronising. Someone needs to keep the lights turned on and the cars running while us academics have our heads in the clouds.

It's also good for our side politically. Skilled manual workers have traditionally been a bastion of labour unions.

[laundry_queen]

35. They still have this at my daughter's school

It's a popular course (although my daughter opted to take Foods instead - she loves cooking and is thinking about becoming a chef). They also have outdoor ed, which teaches survival skills and numerous other very interesting options. The auto shop class has been around since I went to the same school, back in the 90's, and the cool thing is kids who graduate and have taken the class often get hired as assistants to help teach the course.